Fantasies of Liberalism and Liberal Jurisprudence: State Law, Politics, and the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian Community Dr. Gad
1 Fantasies of Liberalism and Liberal Jurisprudence: State Law, Politics, and the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian Community Dr. Gad Barzilai Dr. Gad Barzilai is senior lecturer in political science and a jurist, co-director of the law, politics, and society program at Tel Aviv University. This paper was presented in different versions in the Center for the Study of Law and Society, Berkeley University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, faculty seminars at Tel Aviv University and the conference on Bergman, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. I would like to acknowledge helpful remarks made by Laura Edelman, Malcolm Feeley, Tamar Herman, Menachem Hofnung, Robert Kagan, David Kretzmer, Pnina Lahav, Noga Morag-Levin, Emanuel Ottollengi, Avi Shlaim, Ronen Shamir, Oren Yiftachel, and Efraim Yuchtman-Yaar. Yoav Dotan and Ruth Gavison were encouraging editors and two anonymous reviewers improved the article. Thanks. © Israel Law Review. 1 2 I. Between Bergman (1969) and Kaadan (2000) About thirty years after Bergman case1, Israel constitutional structure and its legal culture are not responsive to minority needs, and more largely to social needs of deprived communities. The liberal language and judicial review over Knesset legislation that have been empowered by and followed Bergman have not reconciled this utterly problematic discrepancy between jurisprudence and social needs. Bergman ruling has symbolized the outset of a new area in Israel jurisprudence, the area of liberalism, since it has empowered the notion of judicial counter majoritarianism as the center, however problematic, of democracy. It has been a modest ruling, and a careful one, dwelling only on procedural deficiencies as a cause of judicial abolition of parliamentary legislation.
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